


For Want of a Flame

by LMX



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e07 Marooned, Episode: s01e09 Left Behind, Gen, Leonard Snart (Mentioned) - Freeform, Leonard Snart did not think this through, Neither did the Time Masters, Panic Attack, Pyromania, Spoilers, Time Bastards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 12:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11275467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: Leonard Snart is an utter bastard, and Mick Rory's pyromania is what saved him from the Time Bastards' cognitive intrusion. Yeah, that pretty much covers it.





	For Want of a Flame

Mick knew on a bone-deep level that the only thing left in him when he got caught up in setting a fire was the fire itself. Mind, body and soul, his memories and emotions, time and space, it all turned into one single ever-burning inferno that had no greater meaning or intent, but consumed him in its entirety.

Walking away from that was impossible – what was away? There wasn't anything but this flame right here, right now, nowhere else could be any better, no one else was any more important. Sometimes he wasn't even sure he remembered what legs were, that walking was a thing he'd ever known how to do.

It was thrilling to have all the means for a fire in his hands. It was calming to lose himself in a free flame. It was perfect, and it was part of him.

Thing was, provided he was sensible (granted, not all the time) and he kept some tiny bit of himself aware of everything else that wasn't on fire (the hardest part), then the fallout was usually minimal. There were bad times, and times when the fire won out and either he or someone else came out the worst for it, but he wasn't - as a general rule - out of control.

After that first big fire, after his family, mostly it was him that came out the worst from his loss of control these days. And the one time he'd nearly lost his whole self… well the memory of burning, of *being* fire, and the fever that tried to burn its way out of his skin in the months of healing that followed, it was enough to hold him out for the whole time he was in that safehouse without a single match or lighter to his name. The flames immortalised on his skin still give him a hot rush every time he comes aware of them, like a teenager realising anyone could see their hickey and know exactly what they've been up to. Something like pride.

It was part of his life, the all-consuming obsession, something that needed pandering to sometimes, pushing away at others, and something that could never be outright ignored.

He woke on wet grass, weak sunlight breaking through thick tree cover, and knew without looking that nothing around him would be good to burn. The air tasted damp, and chilled in a way that said very early spring.

There was no sign of Snart or the Waverider, and he spared some time to snarl and rage over Snart's theatricals. They could have been home by now, the both of them, and back to the life that fit them like a well worn glove. They'd gone to all that effort to displace the Santinis, and set up their little band of Rogues... Snart talked big about the scores he'd lined up all through time and spce, and how they would return just minutes after they'd left - no one even noticing they'd gone except for the mountains of loot they'd return with - but that wasn't what he'd ever been planning. He'd made that more than clear in the months since.

And now he'd abandoned Mick for those do-gooders. Walked away from their decades of partnership for the sake of a couple of months of aggravation and moronic behaviour.

He was getting fraught, getting that tingly feeling in his fingertips that meant he was breathing too fast and he needed to slow everything back down. He needed a fire in his hands right now, needed something bright and hot and unpredictable. He didn't need Snart to point these things out to him - he never had - but Snart generally spotted it sooner than he did and he was getting lazy about keeping track of himself with Snart so close at hand all the time.

Impatiently, he fished through his pockets for his lighter.

He didn't find it.

There was something about a captive flame – it was enough to tide him over, to distract him from whatever his brain was doing or from whatever was going on around him that he just wasn't interested in dealing with, but eventually you'd seen all the shapes a captive flame could make and reality started filtering in around the edges – jarring somehow for its unwanted advances. The easiest way to stop that jarring sensation from turning into a *thing* was to shut off the flame the moment it started to lose its grip – to take hold of the moment and make looking away intentional.

Lighters weren't so bad; they were trapped, sure, but so very easily changed by unpredictable airflow, and a couple of easily acquired extras could make a captive flame very much a free flame. It was a decision every time, to turn off a lighter instead of bringing the flame into contact with something flammable, but generally one that was fairly easily made.

Stoves were more difficult. Their captive flames inevitably left him buzzy and antagonistic because what use was an open flame if it was so goddamned *orderly*, standing in a freaking line and just *waiting* to be used, like it didn't even *want* to burn anything. He didn't really get on with stoves.

He'd take anything right now, though. Even a stove, but really he wanted a lighter or a match, something to give him a spark to make something more out of. He'd even forgive goddamned Leonard Snart for abandoning him here if he'd just turn up with a lighter in his hand like he had all those times in juvie. Fuck, that was how he'd turned all Mick's hatred into friendship the first time – and there had been a *lot* of hatred back then. Some of it undirected, some of it very directed.

Snart always told other people about the juvie meeting like Mick had swooped in as some kind of guardian angel, but Mick had just been taking advantage of the two Santinis Len had already put on the ground – two against four was pretty good odds where Mick was concerned. He wouldn't be confident saying he'd even noticed the shiv that Len remembered as the most important object in the scene.

Snart's light fingers had kept him with at least one lighter to hand for the rest of the time they'd been in there together, and while he'd kicked up plenty of fuss when anything of his got burned or sooty, he'd rarely lost that grin that said he could see Mick enjoying the destruction and deep down he approved.

Mick stumbled over a tree root, and re-focused on his surroundings. It had been days of walking now, and everything still looked the same. He took a breath, and started walking again, still sure that if he walked for long enough he'd find civilisation and some damned matches or a lighter. Hell, he'd take a stovetop right now if it meant the itchy scratching feeling under his skin would just give him a break.

He'd been dodging areas of thick trees and taking the highest point of every feeble excuse for a hill to get a good look around. Everything was green and grey - a wet and rolling landscape. There hadn't been any new rain but the clouds hung low in every direction, fog rolling in thick and sudden and then rolling back out just as quick.

His jacket was thick enough to keep of most of the damp, but the chill was pervasive, and as the light of the third day started to fade, he struggled to find somewhere to lie down that wasn't filled with sodden leaf litter or open to the chill air.

In the end he sat with his back against a massive tree trunk and pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders, cursing Snart with every dirty word he knew and some he wasn't entirely sure he was pronouncing right, but felt good.

He dreamt of candles catching light to curtains and woke to the dawn with a feeling like hornets under his skin, buzzing and sharp. He should have spent more time talking to the boyscout about boyscouting - or at least tuned in from time to time when he was talking. He knew what half a dozen edible berries looked like, but none of the trees or bushes around him had fruit, and all of the mushrooms he'd seen on the damp ground looked poisonous.

He'd found running water a while back, and followed it a while before he was sure there wasn't anything dead upstream before he'd let himself drink, but he couldn't survive on water alone. He'd probably turn his back on a blaze right now if he was offered a burger.

Guess that answered one question though - eventually desire for food did win out over the flames, if only during his waking hours. He was looking for food more than for dry fuel as he walked today, scanning plants and trees with an urgency that was becoming visceral, nearly at the point where he was willing to try leaves and roots at random. Test his gut against the worst that nature could throw at him. Nothing could be worst than a 3am Central City Taco, surely, and he'd survived those when they'd had Snart laid up for days.

The thought of Snart had the fire that hunger had banked flaring up again, his fingers twitching for his lighter, searching every pocket of his clothing and then with a roar of frustration, ripping it all off to search every seam, every *stitch*. Snart wouldn't have been so stupid as to leave him like this. Wouldn't have been so *cruel*.

His clothes, now ripped and ragged on the ground, denied the claim. Snart was a cold man, a cruel man, it couldn't be denied. He'd left Mick with nothing.

He slumped into the pile of fabric, his heart searing his chest, his breath burning his lungs, setting fire to his very *body* in the absence of anything else fit to burn. He heaved and gasped as black spots exploded into his vision, and then he faded out.

He woke cold and stiff, still naked in the bed of his discarded clothes. His throat ached like he'd been breathing smoke, but the air was clear and damp. As he opened his eyes, he froze still.

Directly in front of him - investigating the outstretched arm of his jacket - was a rat.

-

He opened his eyes to a cold, white, partially reflective surface, and wondered if he'd been in this new facility long. The ache in his stomach was mostly gone, replaced by a rawness in his throat like he'd been screaming, or like the docs had shoved something down there.

He'd been intubated before, he wasn't a fan, but not knowing where he was was giving him that itchy finger feeling, like he wanted something hot and unpredictable against his skin right now. Thing was, a place like this? It usually meant no fire until he got to talk to the docs in charge, and sometimes not even then, depending on the type of doc.

The door opened and he spared the newcomer - looked like a nurse, white clothes but no name badge, the docs always wanted you to know their name first - half a glance before returning to picking at the ridged scar tissue on his wrist.

“Need a lighter,” he said before the nurse could say anything, just in case asking would be enough. He'd normally start with the polite kind of asking, but this place was rubbing up against his last nerve.

The nurse didn't even glance up, crossing to a screen on the side wall that looked vaguely familiar in a way that would have rung bells if he wasn't *vibrating* with need right now.

“Hey!” he shouted, clenching his hands. He made to surge up, out of the bed - to make a *point* of his need - but something snapped him back to the bed before he got more than a few inches up.

Right. That kind of facility.

Another new face walked in, this one making eye contact briefly. Still no name badge, but this one looked more like a doctor - something in the way she looked Mick over like he was a collection of items rather than a whole thing. The maybe-doctor glanced up over Mick's head as if she was looking at something floating there, and then turned to the nurse.

They talked gibberish for longer than Mick would usually have been able to stand, but the need was choking him right now and words were proving difficult to get hold of. He thrashed a bit, to get a handle on the type of restraints, but didn't really learn anything.

The two strangers stepped up to the bed - one on either side, and still looking just over his head instead of at him directly. “The impulse disorder will have to go, but the rest looks sound. The hatred will serve particularly well, I think.” The doctor sounded bored, and her lip lifted in some kind of sneer as she glanced over Mick's chest and arms. “We'll bring in a specialist to consult on the scarring, but I suspect we'll want to get rid of that.”

That sent a rush of cold through him. His scars were part of him. A part of him that he'd made, a part of him that he'd designed - in as much as reaching into a fire could be called design. He'd literally walked into fire and survived the aftermath for those scars, and this asshole wasn't even going to ask him about taking them away?

He lunged and threw himself at the restraints, his breathing heaving and sharp. The nurse spared him a scathing glance as he barely moved off the bed. There was a sharp pain in the back of his neck and he fell into hell.

-

There's a flame in front of him - it's beautiful, but meaningless. There's a moth in the corner that has just caught sight of it, already trapped in its aura. The moth will die, but Kronos won't.

He's aware that there's more in his head than there should be, and also less. He was given the opportunity to light the flame for himself, but it gave him no thrill, no joy, it didn't excite him.

The thought of chasing down Snart and his team excites him - but that isn't right. It should be Hunter and his team. He's a bounty hunter, hunting down Hunter and his team (that amuses him, and he's not aware that it shouldn't until the other bounty hunters look at him strangely). There's more in his head than there should be.

And less.

The part of him that's more present than it should be mourns the bit that's gone, but he knows that's what saved him. The obsession, the need that had consumed him, that had been all that had been in his head when he was wiped. And now it was gone.

But he was still here.

And he was pissed.

**Author's Note:**

> I reblog random stuff on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lmx-v3point3) if you ever needed another random person to chat to.


End file.
